Any of you ever visit Australia?
I had the chance last year. What a piece of work that place
is. Something about continuously spinning upside down must
scramble the brains. Just look at it. Animals with pouches,
birds that can't fly and a version of English that makes
translation into Yank-speak more of a challenge than the human
genome project. The national gem? It's green, er… red…
uh… orange… hmm… blue… keep the bloody thing still,
will ya! And if this weren't enough, the country's
landmark is an opera house. An
o-pee-ra house, mate! Will all those who have actually
heard an Australian opera, please stand, raise your stubby
aloft and repeat after me: "Fair go, ya' bastaaard."

So,
there you have it – an upside-down world populated by
an upside-down people. And that, my friends, leads to more
craziness than burning a piece of red, white and blue cloth
in front of an American Republican (down boy, it's just
an Australian flag).

Decisions, decisions

Anyhow, get comfy
so I can tell you a little story from the Land Down Under.
It's an opal story, but one with lessons for all of us.

Opal
was first synthesized a long long time ago, pre-Beowulf. I
think the year was 1963. Those that brought us the first synthetic
opal were the same group of test-tube jockeys that figured
out just what makes an opal show its marvelous play-of-color.

Now
flash forward a bit, to a Lightning Ridge miner. Lenny Cram
doesn't have any highfalutin' scientific training
nor any bomb-science laboratory, just a love for opal and
a workshed out back. But he's got ideas, ideas on opals
and ideas on how they form– ideas having their germ deep
in the ground. So he busies himself with jar after jar of
experiments. Years go by, and the jars multiply, each with
opal growing in it. Eventually word gets out, back to the
lab boys who originally developed the process for synthetic
opal. They sniff a patent violation and come calling. But
what they see in that back shed is brand new. No patent violation
here. They leave him be.

Will all those who have actually
heard an Australian opera, please stand, raise your stubby
aloft and repeat after me: "Fair go, ya' bastaaard."

Lenny Cram continues his experiments.
And he has some luck. Produces jar after jar of artificial
opal. But he's still not happy. Something about the stuff
is not real enough. So he keeps tinkering, trying to unlock
the secret of how opal really grows in the ground. By the
time I visited him last year, he had opal growing in jars
just as it does in nature, black crystal, white, seams in
dirt, even Yowah Nuts. An incredible sight.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Have any of you ever
dug a great big hole in order to find an itty-bitty piece
of stone? I must confess I have not. Just thinking about it
gets me exhausted quicker than Bill Clinton at a White House
intern orientation. But I have empathy for those that do.
The thing about digging in the ground is that it gives you
plenty of time to think. Spade by spade, shovel by shovel,
one bucket at a time. You get a real close look what
you are digging for. You also develop an appreciation for
it. You begin to understand the pain and labor to bring something
up just so that, as Pliny once said, "one finger might
shine."

Lenny
Cram has respect for the stone he has spent his entire life
seeking. When I saw what he had done, I asked the most natural
question: "What are you planning to do with your home-grown
opals." Lenny just looked me straight in the eye and
said "Nothing." And after helping roll my tongue
back into my throat, he explained why. He believes his stones
cannot be identified. Rather than commercially producing a
product that could destroy his industry, he would rather devote
the rest of his life to building it up. Which he is doing.
1998 saw Len Cram complete the first volume of a multi-volume
work on the history of Australia's opal mines. It's
called A Journey With Colour (ISBN 0-9585-4140-X).
I could suggest an alternative title.
Try R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

The thing about digging holes in
the ground is that it gives you plenty of time to think. You
begin to understand the pain and labor required to bring something
up just so that, as Pliny once said, "one finger might
shine."

Those who know me understand I
shed no tears for De Beers. The simple idea of one company
owning over 80% of the diamond business gets my blood boiling
quicker than a Bill Gates weep session on how tough the competition
is nowadays. But I gotta give the South African monopoly credit
for their approach to the new Pegasus diamonds. In between
gulps of diamond crow, they quietly admitted that they had
known about techniques to alter the color of diamonds for
over 20 year. Yep, they knew how to do this, but chose to
sit on a potential goldmine. Contrast this with General Electric
and Lazare Kaplan, whose public statements have suggested
that they are doing what they are doing for the excellent
reason that, if they don't, someone else will.

Culture

Before I let you
go, let me tell you one more Aussie story. The folks Down
Under certainly are a cultured lot – why even the cabbies
have something to say. On a ride to Melbourne's airport,
my driver started talking about Henry David Thoreau, and mentioned
the following tale: In 1845, Thoreau refused to pay his taxes,
stating he could not in good conscience support a government
that allowed slavery (among other things). So the powers-that-be
from the Land of the Free threw his ass in jail. While there,
his good friend, the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, came to pay
him a visit. Spying Thoreau sitting quietly in his cell, Emerson
moaned: "David, what are you doing in there?" Looking
him dead in the eye, Thoreau answered: "Waldo, what are you doing out there?"

In 1845, Thoreau refused to pay
his taxes, stating that he could not in good conscience support
a government that allowed slavery.

Inside out

In this business,
enhancements are creating more mischief than ever before.
Me thinks it's time for those developing such enhancements
to take responsibility for the havoc they wreak. The fact
that they are enhancing "precious stones" means
they have opted to be part of the "precious stone"
industry. So they should begin to behave like it.

When
a company develops an industry-crippling treatment such as
the Pegasus diamond, that company has a responsibility to
assist in its identification, to help preserve the very business
it is taking part in. And if they can't figure out how
to do it? Then they need to give others enough information
to have a fighting chance. In the Pegasus case, that means
providing major gemological institutes with before-and-after
samples, before they begin selling material onto the
market. Anything less suggests that GE/LKI's only purpose
is to make money, at the expense of the very product they
are selling. And at the expense of everyone else in this business.

It's gut-check time for our industry. We've already
lost the war with colored stones. But it doesn't have
to be that way for diamonds. I'm in here. What are you
doing out there?

Acknowledgments

The author would like
to extend his thanks to all the fine folks Down Under, who
showed off their lovely country with some of the finest hospitality
I've ever seen. Too many to name, but in particular,
Terry Coldham, who was my host for much of my trip.

Author's Afterword

Published
in GemKey Magazine (1999, Vol. 2, No. 1, Nov.-Dec.),
this is installment #7 of my Digital Devil column.
Unfortunately, the editors did a bit of a hack job on it,
leaving out entirely the "Culture" section.

Reader comments

7 Oct., 1999
Dear Richard,
G'Day Dick, Ow are ya me old
China? Fair dinkum mate, yer column in GemKey ['Fun
Down Under'] really takes the cake. Just as well our
Aussies have got the well known laid-back sense of humour
or next time yer was up the Ridge yer might have got a bunch
of fives. Lay off the accent bit, Dick. You reckon our accent
is funny – strewth mate when we get a Yank in the shop
they generally need an interpreter. Californian English is
OK, but Deep South may as well be another language. Perhaps
it is! Glad you enjoyed meeting Len Cram – one of our
living legends out in the bush, indeed in our industry. The
world needs more like Len to keep us all sane and bring a
bit of reality to the planet.

Cheers mate,
John Tapner
Sydney

Richard W. Hughes responds:
John, I haven't laughed so much in a long time.
Considering the volume of mail I get from Australia, it must
mean you Aussies have the most highly refined sense of humor
on the planet. My apologies if you saw only the print version
of the article. I think the original above is much better
than that printed in GemKey.

Regards,
Richard Hughes

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